Wednesday, October 30, 2013

New review paper finds temperature history of Antarctica argues strongly against AGW

A new review paper from SPPI and CO2 Science reviews the published scientific literature on historical temperature trends in Antarctica and concludes, "in light of the many findings of the diverse studies cited above, it is clear that the temperature history of Antarctica provides no evidence for the CO2-induced global warming hypothesis. In fact, it argues strongly against it."

From the birth and death of ice ages to the decadal meanderings of modern-day weather patterns, studies of Antarctica bear witness to the fact that the atmosphere's CO2 concentration is not a major player in bringing about significant changes in earth's climate; and in what follows, the case for this proposition is presented in the form of brief reviews of pertinent studies directed, first of all, at glacial periods, then the singular Holocene, and finally the past few decades.

By the turn of the century (and millennium), the bottom of the poorly-constructed bandwagon had begun to fall apart … and a severe blow was thus dealt to the climate-alarmist community, as a major tenant of the CO2-induced global warming hypothesis was shown to be contradicted by real-world observations.The US, British and Italian researchers say their findings indicate "warmer-than-present climate conditions" at the times and locations of the identified presence of the southern elephant seal, and that it would have been exposed to environments substantially warmer than present.

Their data also indicate that the level of this warmth … was not intense enough to drive the seals from Antarctica.Antarctica as a whole appears to be in the midst of a cooling trend, based on the study of Watkins and Simmonds (2000), who analyzed region-wide changes in sea ice.

Reporting on trends in a number of Southern Ocean sea ice parameters over the period 1987 to 1996, they found statistically significant increases in sea ice area and total sea ice extent, as well as an increase in sea ice season length since the 1990s.When all is said and done, therefore, the fantastic multi-meter rise in sea level predicted by Al Gore and James Hansen to occur this century appears to be pure fantasy, and even more so, in light of Monaghan and Bromwich's ultimate observation that "a widespread signal of Antarctic climate change is not obvious over the past ~50 years."In conclusion, and in light of the many findings of the diverse studies cited above, it is clear that the temperature history of Antarctica provides no evidence for the CO2-induced global warming hypothesis. In fact, it argues strongly against it. But what if the Antarctic were to warm as a result of some natural or anthropogenic-induced change in earth's climate? What would the consequences be? For one thing, it would likely help to increase both the number and diversity of penguin species (Smith et al., 199927; Sun et al., 200028), and it would also tend to increase the size and number of populations of the continent's only two vascular plant species (Xiong et al., 200029). With respect to the continent's great ice sheets, there would not be much of a problem either, as not even a warming event as dramatic as 10°C is predicted to result in a net change in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (Näslund et al., 200030), which suggests that climate-alarmist predictions of catastrophic coastal flooding due to the melting of the world's polar ice sheets are way off the mark when it comes to representing reality.